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    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    Ebook137 pages1 hour

    The Merchant of Venice

    By William Shakespeare

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    The Merchant of Venice is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Although classified as a comedy in the First Folio, and while it shares certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps more remembered for its dramatic scenes, and is best known for the character of Shylock.

    The title character is the merchant Antonio, not the Jewish moneylender Shylock, who is the play's most prominent and more famous villain. Though Shylock is a tormented character, he is also a tormentor, so whether he is to be viewed with disdain or sympathy is up to the audience (as influenced by the interpretation of the play's director and lead actors). As a result, The Merchant of Venice is often classified as one of Shakespeare's problem plays.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWS
    Release dateJun 13, 2018
    ISBN9782291040347
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen. He produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. He died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.

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      Book preview

      The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare

      The Merchant of Venice

      The Merchant of Venice

      William Shakespeare

       Copyright © 2018 by OPU

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      Act I

      SCENE I. Venice. A street.

      Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SALANIO

      ANTONIO

      In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:

      It wearies me; you say it wearies you;

      But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

      What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,

      I am to learn;

      And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,

      That I have much ado to know myself.

      SALARINO

      Your mind is tossing on the ocean;

      There, where your argosies with portly sail,

      Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,

      Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,

      Do overpeer the petty traffickers,

      That curtsy to them, do them reverence,

      As they fly by them with their woven wings.

      SALANIO

      Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,

      The better part of my affections would

      Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still

      Plucking the grass, to know where sits the wind,

      Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads;

      And every object that might make me fear

      Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt

      Would make me sad.

      SALARINO

      My wind cooling my broth

      Would blow me to an ague, when I thought

      What harm a wind too great at sea might do.

      I should not see the sandy hour-glass run,

      But I should think of shallows and of flats,

      And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand,

      Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs

      To kiss her burial. Should I go to church

      And see the holy edifice of stone,

      And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,

      Which touching but my gentle vessel's side,

      Would scatter all her spices on the stream,

      Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,

      And, in a word, but even now worth this,

      And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought

      To think on this, and shall I lack the thought

      That such a thing bechanced would make me sad?

      But tell not me; I know, Antonio

      Is sad to think upon his merchandise.

      ANTONIO

      Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,

      My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

      Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate

      Upon the fortune of this present year:

      Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.

      SALARINO

      Why, then you are in love.

      ANTONIO

      Fie, fie!

      SALARINO

      Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad,

      Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy

      For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,

      Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,

      Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:

      Some that will evermore peep through their eyes

      And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper,

      And other of such vinegar aspect

      That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,

      Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

      Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO

      SALANIO

      Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,

      Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well:

      We leave you now with better company.

      SALARINO

      I would have stay'd till I had made you merry,

      If worthier friends had not prevented me.

      ANTONIO

      Your worth is very dear in my regard.

      I take it, your own business calls on you

      And you embrace the occasion to depart.

      SALARINO

      Good morrow, my good lords.

      BASSANIO

      Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when?

      You grow exceeding strange: must it be so?

      SALARINO

      We'll make our leisures to attend on yours.

      Exeunt Salarino and Salanio

      LORENZO

      My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio,

      We two will leave you: but at dinner-time,

      I pray you, have in mind where we must meet.

      BASSANIO

      I will not fail you.

      GRATIANO

      You look not well, Signior Antonio;

      You have too much respect upon the world:

      They lose it that do buy it with much care:

      Believe me, you are marvellously changed.

      ANTONIO

      I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;

      A stage where every man must play a part,

      And mine a sad one.

      GRATIANO

      Let me play the fool:

      With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,

      And let my liver rather heat with wine

      Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

      Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,

      Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?

      Sleep when he wakes and creep into the jaundice

      By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio—

      I love thee, and it is my love that speaks—

      There are a sort of men whose visages

      Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,

      And do a wilful stillness entertain,

      With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion

      Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,

      As who should say 'I am Sir Oracle,

      And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!'

      O my Antonio, I do know of these

      That therefore only are reputed wise

      For saying nothing; when, I am very sure,

      If they should speak, would almost damn those ears,

      Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.

      I'll tell thee more of this another time:

      But fish not, with this melancholy bait,

      For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.

      Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile:

      I'll end my exhortation after dinner.

      LORENZO

      Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time:

      I must be one of these same dumb wise men,

      For Gratiano never lets me speak.

      GRATIANO

      Well, keep me company but two years moe,

      Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.

      ANTONIO

      Farewell: I'll grow a talker for this gear.

      GRATIANO

      Thanks, i' faith, for silence is only commendable

      In a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible.

      Exeunt GRATIANO and LORENZO

      ANTONIO

      Is that any thing now?

      BASSANIO

      Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more

      than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two

      grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you

      shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you

      have them, they are not worth the search.

      ANTONIO

      Well, tell me now what lady is the same

      To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage,

      That you to-day promised to tell me of?

      BASSANIO

      'Tis not unknown to you, Antonio,

      How much I have

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